The most noticeable aspect of Dennis's poem, and the one that affects all other aspects, is the huge shift in mood that the work undergoes from beginning to end. The mood of the poem is its emotional quality. In the very first line of the poem, Dennis cues his readers that the poem is going to have a negative mood: "It must be troubling for the god who loves you." This line sets up two concepts: that there is a god who loves the reader, and that this unnamed god is distressed. Dennis reinforces this mood throughout the poem. For example, in the beginning of the fourth line, he says "It must be painful for him to watch you." Dennis continues using words that convey a negative mood, such as when he notes that the reader could have lived a life that was "thirty points above the life...